


Battles of the Mind

by PurpleArrowzandLeather



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Determined Steve Grant Rogers, Gen, POW Bucky, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 13:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18994018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleArrowzandLeather/pseuds/PurpleArrowzandLeather
Summary: Bucky's life in Hydra's hands, and how the ruined man broke free.





	Battles of the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing.  
> This was just a fic idea that I had a few days ago and I sad down today and dropped close to five thousand words on a page. Enjoy! :)

          When Bucky first comes around, everything is hazy. His head pounds and his eyes don’t want to focus. For a few moments, that confusion is the only thing he knows. After that, it’s blinding pain. He tries to move his arms, biting back a shout as someone pins him down. Turning his head and looking down, he numbly notes that his arm is missing. Doctors drill away at what’s left, but he doesn’t feel it. The pain he was feeling must have been from losing the arm in the first place. Ghosts of remembrance. 

          “Where am I?” he manages. 

          The doctors slow a bit as they realize he’s awake, placing a needle in his other arm and causing the world to fade again. It hurts, but it doesn’t all at the same time. Then there is nothing.  

          He wakes again sometime later, but something is different. His left side feels heavy and his shoulder feels raw. He tries to move but stops only moments later, the effort proving to be too much. He groans, looking around his small cell until his gaze finally lands on his arm. A helpless sound leaves him when he sees the metal framework of an arm, the connection crude and painful. He can move the fingers and joints, he finds, but any action involving his shoulder is agony.  

          Taking a deep, calming breath, Bucky looks around his cell again. It could be an abandoned hospital room, but somehow, he knows better than to think that. He presses the palm of his right hand to his eyes in an attempt to stop his skull from hammering, but it doesn’t do much good. He’s tempted to shift away from where he’s slumped against the wall, but it doesn’t sound like much fun.  _Man, if that dame of Steve’s could see_ _me_ _now._  

          After a few more moments of quiet, the locks on the door slide open with a scraping sound that makes his headache worse. The one and only Dr. Zola comes through the door and Bucky closes his eyes.  

          “ _Dammit._ ” 

          Zola makes a face at the expletive. “Is something wrong, Sargeant?” 

          “Aside from the fact that you’re still alive?” 

          He hums. “Hmm. We will tame that attitude in time, Mr. Barnes. And believe me, we  _do_ have time.” 

          “Bite me, doc.”  

          Bucky scowls at him, his expression only shifting when the man before him pulls out a needle with an unknown liquid inside. Zola approaches and Bucky tries to move away. He’s stopped by a short chain attached to a metal collar around his neck. 

          “Don’t touch me!” 

          Zola pins his good arm against the wall, taking the cap off of his syringe and sticking him with it. Bucky lifts his metal arm, pain tearing through him again, but it’s worth it to see the look on Zola face when he’s batted away like a fly. The skin of his shoulder  _burns_  and Bucky bites his bottom lip as the world starts to swim. Maybe it’s whatever is in the needle. Maybe it’s the nausea. He doesn’t know. 

          He passes out only to wake up while he’s being dragged into another room. Zola must not have gotten a good sedative, if it was a sedative at all. Hell, it could have been days. Would he even know? 

          They put him up in a chair, clamping his good arm down tightly and strapping the wiry frame of his metal one. They know he can’t move it very much. He can feel blood on his back where the skin on his shoulder must have torn. The metal they’ve attached to him isn’t flexible at all. 

          The other doctors pull his head back, forcing him to hold still while something lowers across his face.  _Not again_.  

          Bucky screams, his breaths close to rasps. When it’s finished, he tries to ease the pain by taking deeper breaths and reciting his ID number. It’s simpler if he has something else to think about. Zola tuts, murmuring something about them being right where they left off.  

          “Sargeant Barnes. I’d suggest you cooperate. You are now the property of Hydra, and we can do with you whatever we please.” 

          He stubbornly continues to repeat himself. 

          “Sargeant. We’ve learned something about your dear Captain Rogers.” 

          Bucky’s words stutter to a halt and he risks looking at Zola. “Steve?” 

          When he says the name, someone zaps him with something from behind his back. Bucky jolts, looking up at the ceiling. What if they captured him? Where is he? Something violent rises in him at the threat against his best friend and he snarls at Zola.  

          Every time he says Steve’s name over the course of the next few hours, someone shocks him. Zola must be getting at something, but Bucky can’t tell what. There must be some purpose behind it. Eventually, Zola has them push him back again and the machine takes his coherence of the real world. His skull buzzes, and it’s not completely unpleasant now.  

          “Sargeant, can you tell me the name of your friend?” 

          It’s information they already know, so he says the name anyway. He’ll never give them anything else, but everyone knows who Steve is. The shock is expected, but he flinches hard anyway. Knowing that it’s coming doesn’t stop it from hurting.  

          He’s certain over the next few weeks that they keep asking, keep shocking, keep shaking up his mind. They ask, and they ask, and they ask until Bucky is hoarse from screaming, his answering only an exhausted murmuring. He isn’t sure when it happened, but in the days following, there came a point where he wasn’t able to say Steve’s name anymore. He could think it all he wanted. He could think of any of the Commandos if he wanted, but he couldn’t say their names. Names hurt. Memories hurt.  

          None of the other names end with the doctors "wiping him" (as they call it), though. No, only Steve’s name brings that kind of pain. Knowing those names isn’t a comfort anymore. He’ll probably die here and be forgotten with those names in history. 

          Everything is hazy again the next time Zola comes. He barely remembers why he’s there. All he knows is that Zola is the enemy. There are more doctors this time and they take his mechanical arm off. He’s never gotten past the pain of using it.  

          “Howard Stark has gifted us with new technology. You should be grateful, soldier.” 

          Something about that name is familiar. 

          They shoot him full of anesthesia, tearing at his skin until the new arm sits properly on him. They make him watch as they strip away at what’s left of his stump. They work and work on him until it’s perfect, but Bucky passes out long before that. He killed a doctor, he thinks, in the daze of pain somewhere. All that’s left when he wakes up in his cell is aching skin and muscle. The scabs from their work pull uncomfortably, but they’ll be healed soon enough. He supposes that it’s one thing from Zola’s experiments he’s thankful for. He’s lost count of how many times they’ve tested the rate at which he heals. He’s been burned and stabbed, but none of it ever stays. 

          The tissue scarring from his shoulder, though? He has a feeling it’ll never go away. Even a super soldier has limits.  _Super soldier? Why is that familiar?_  

          Steve. How could he forget? Away from the danger of the chair, Bucky murmurs that name for the first time in months. It doesn’t hurt for the first time in a long time. How could he forget? He swore to Steve that he’d be there for him. Steve’s name is there for him now. 

          He stares at his arm for the longest time, moving the shiny metal fingers to gauge what it’s like. His movement at the shoulder doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the old arm. It’s a relief to be free from it. Even with the reassurance that it works better, he claws at the skin, just trying to get it off. He doesn’t want anything that Hydra has to give. What little he has for nails bites into his skin. They’ve practically seared his flesh to the metal and he gives up with an agonized moan.  

          The collar around his neck rubs against dry and sore spots, but he doesn’t feel like moving to adjust it. It’s never done much good. Bucky sits there for a few days. They give him a little food and water, but he’s starving. His metabolism is too fast for the meager amount they give him.  

          He rebels again, that name returning and the fire within him as well. For his efforts, he is rewarded with the chair. This time brings a mask that acts more like a muzzle. They’re trying to remind him that he belongs to them. He’s trapped, and he is theirs. Even so, he fights. They put a man before him on his knees: a man with blond hair and blue eyes that sparks something in him. They want Barnes to kill him. It’s Steve again, trying to find him through the confusion. He croaks out that name, lowering the gun they had given him – he doesn’t remember getting it – and fighting against the people around him instead. They grab the chain of his collar and he lets out a rough gasp. His captor glares at him, his hold on the chain almost tight enough to choke him. Bucky holds back another helpless sound. 

          They kill the blond man anyway and take Barnes back to the chair. His ID number comes back to him out of habit and they do it all over again, throwing him back in his cell for the next few days. While he’s chained to the wall, his new handlers toy with him. They take his shirt, the only thing really keeping him warm, and they fiddle with his scarring. They want to break it open. They want to hurt him. Bucky lifts his new arm, smashing his captor’s face in until the other man hits him over the head with the butt of his rifle. The impact is a sickening crack, but he doesn’t stay conscious long enough to care.  

          His hair is too long. That’s what he notices when he wakes up. 

          _What would Ma say if she could see how long my hair is?_ The picture draws a laugh out of him, his first since his recapture. He can just see her getting out the wooden spoon and then taking scissors to his hair herself.  

          With that thought to comfort him, he spends the next few hours (or is it days?) in silence. The time brings him into the fourth.... something. He’s lost track of how long he’s been in the same spot. He likely couldn’t move now if he wanted to. Everything is numb except for his metal arm. He’s getting temperature and pressure readings, which makes him feel a bit better. With time, he feels no pain at all in his shoulder.  

          It could be another week, maybe two when he forgets the exchange. 

          Zola returns.  

          Bucky receives him the same way he always does. He sneers before speaking, Zola’s smug look disappearing when Steve’s full name leaves him. They want him to forget, and he had until he remembered what Zola wanted. Zola calls for assistance and they take him back to the chair. They turn his world back into snow. Soon enough he can’t remember what it was that he did. He only knows that they’re punishing him for something.  

          There must have been  _something_ that he did wrong.  

          Why can’t he remember what he did?  

          The next time he has clarity, the people around him are speaking Russian. He’s not supposed to.... He doesn’t know Russian. Is he supposed to know Russian? The sniper doesn’t remember, but they teach him. When he can’t remember something, he reverts back to English, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that, too. It’s worse right after a round on the chair, but he improves. He speaks English with a Russian accent now. Because of all the cloudiness in his mind, he doesn’t recall which he learned first. It doesn’t matter which. They continue to teach him more languages, so it never matters.  

          Sometimes the soldier wonders why he’s there, but he doesn’t know. He lost his name somewhere along the way.  

          There are days when an image will come to him of a scrappy teenager with too much heart and too little strength. Other people who find him can be female or male. There is one woman in particular who has eyes like his and dark hair like his. She’s not his mother. He knows that isn’t possible for some reason.  

          Why does it matter if he had a mother? 

          Training pulls his focus away from anything he could take the time to know. The Russians feed him more, but he must work for it. He must  _obey_  for it. There is something rebellious in him that he doesn’t understand. It tells him to fight, but he doesn’t see a reason. Is there a need to fight? That rebellious voice orders him to fight anyway. He kills two of his handlers before they manage to knock him out. 

          Another round on the chair and he becomes just as docile and controllable as before.  

          They work on code words with him. He resists at first, not wanting to be vulnerable. He’s a weapon, and these words lower his chances of survival. They are necessary, he is told. His handlers mold him to the point where he hands them a weapon when they enter a room, giving them an opportunity to kill him if they believe he deserves it.  

          That man who kept tormenting him eventually stops appearing, and the soldier forgets him entirely in a short time. When he finishes training, they put him somewhere cold. They say he won’t dream, but they lied. When they wake him, it’s time to work. They give him a target, and his cold clarity leads him through shadows and blood. When he returns, they take away all he knows and the chill returns. He finds eventually that he doesn’t mind. He knows that they do it now. At first, he was confused as to why he couldn’t remember, but with time, it grew easier to leave the cold and return to it.  

          There was a time when he asked for information on his targets, but now he doesn’t care. He’ll find information himself if he needs it.  

          Days or years no longer matter, but eventually, they give him a woman. Her hair is red like blood, and he destroys her. She is his, and one day, she will thank him for this. They take him away from her when they decide she is perfect, and then he forgets her, too.  

         He dreams this time of winter in the city. Which city, he has no idea, but the snow melts underfoot. A bright-eyed boy walks slowly in the street ahead of him, looking sickly. The soldier feels that he knows this boy, but there isn’t anything he can do. When the boy disappears, the soldier continues on his way, but as he goes, he peers down the mouths of alleys.  

          Out of something beyond reason – perhaps instinct – he finds himself searching for trouble. 

          The dream fades as the cold does and the memory leaves him.  

          After a mission that brings him confusion and something like fear, he puts his prize into the grasp of his handlers. That man knew his name. The soldier knew him too, but from where he just doesn’t know. More soldiers are born, and he trained with each of them. Soon, he is the least of them, but he is trusted far more. That is why they hate him.  

          He marches through war zones and embassies for his targets, and he even comes across a woman with red hair. She was guarding his target, so he put a bullet in her to get to him. She would live. For some reason, he wants her to live. 

          When next he wakes, he reaches for something that usually dangles from his neck. It was a dream, but he reaches nonetheless. He tries for a moment to remember, but his caretakers have a mission for him.  

          “Wake up,  _soldat_.” 

          Waking or sleeping. It’s hard to tell the difference anymore. His dreams are filled with people whose names are forgotten and dead. His waking moments are filled with names that will soon be the same.  

          He has no idea how many he’s killed, but when he sleeps, they send him off with gratitude, saying that the world thanks him. The world is grateful. Or at least, that’s what his new handler says. He seems... familiar in a way, but not. 

          His new mission is a dark-skinned man with an eyepatch. He’s an important figure, but the soldier isn’t sure of what kind. He only knows the mission. Yes, the man does manage to get away, but the soldier is good at stalking the shadows. He follows a man who knows how to cover his tracks. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t cover the right ones. His target is close, he just has to figure out which building. It becomes clear when he sees the lean figure of a man climbing through a dark window. The man obviously believes something is wrong and he picks up something off the floor.  

          His target speaks, the words far clearer to him than they would be to anyone else. He watches the blond man who carries himself like a soldier. He notes his eyeline and sets up his rifle. His target goes down, he knows, because the other man drags him away. The dark-skinned man no longer matters. The Winter Soldier’s work is done.  

          He is not used to being chased, and this stranger is strong and fast as he is. He carries a strange shield that reminds him of something he can’t put his finger on. 

          When he returns to their temporary base of operations, he’s prepared to be wiped. They wait, just in case he is needed again. Some part of him notes that it’s probably not a good sign, but he has no use for signs. He is a weapon. Whether or not he is needed is up to his superiors. His new targets are the strange soldier and the red-haired woman. 

          This pair put up a fight, their new associate making a suitable dent in the squad that the Winter Soldier brought. He prowls after them on his own. This whole situation feels wrong. He’s not made to be out in the open. He’s not made to be used in broad daylight.  

          Still, he pursues. There is nothing to do other than that.  

          The woman is the easier of the two. The way she fights is deadly, but he knows every blow before it lands. He can see some of himself in her, but she is his target and must be taken care of.  

          The man with the shield matches him blow for blow and skill for skill. He’s received training, and it appears modification by his own people. That’s the only way to explain how the man overpowers him and takes his mask. The soldier turns, and the man startles, taking a step back. That small action, that _recognition,_  throws him for a loop.  

          “Bucky?” 

          He stops. The name strikes a cord within him, giving voice to something or someone that was buried long ago. “Who the hell is Bucky?” he answers, his accent dropping and instinct drawing conclusions even as he stands stunned. He pulls his weapon and fires, disappearing the first chance he gets.  

          He stumbles into an alley some distance away, panting as he tries to overcome the sudden panic he had just experienced. He gives himself a shake, but it does no good. The way he’d said that name, as if there were no way for it to be real, it spooked the soldier. How could anyone know who he is?  _I_ _don’t even know._  

          Not even that, but there was some part of him that knew the other man as well. That name belonged to him.  

          The rest of his trip back to base is clouded with uncertainty. Who was he really? He settled onto his chair with a lost expression as he tried to dredge up memories that didn’t want to come back to him. The harder he tried, the worse it got. He waited for his handler, hurling off the doctors who got too close and killing a soldier who tried to get him to disengage.  

          “I knew him.” the broken man says. 

          His handler lists his accomplishments, but the soldier hears none of them. He's slapped for belligerence, he's certain, but even that has little power over his churning thoughts. Instead, he takes shallow breaths while the man rambles on, trying to figure out how he got to this point. How had someone taken away his clarity with a single word? How could his identity come crashing down? That man knew him as a person, not a weapon. He tries to remember, but there is nothing left for him to grasp. His eyes burn as he wonders for the first time in a long time what he is.  _He knew me_. 

          The worst knowledge is that the soldier knew him, too. “ _But I knew him_.” 

          His handler sighs, seeming disappointed. “Wipe him and start over.” 

          He lets them push him back, coming to grips with the fact that he’s about to lose the one thing he’s known for sure in a long time. They put the mouth guard in and they clamp him down. He can’t help but wonder. If he isn’t the Winter Soldier, then who is he? 

          The man screams as what he knows is stripped away from him.  

          His waking is sure and certain. He’s done this before. No mask this time, though he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t care. The weapon only has his mission and nothing else. A rogue group of SHIELD agents is trying to stop the rise of Hydra, and they must be stopped. While the other two members are likely important pieces, he was ordered to take out only one: the leader.  

          He disables the first partner’s flight capabilities before flying towards the leader’s intended target. Something feels wrong about being out in broad daylight, but this is his mission. It isn’t in his rights to question it. He arrives first, his target trying to talk him down first.

          “Please don’t make me do this.” 

          The soldier stands, cold and unflinching. Why should he care what this man wants? 

          They fight. There is something about the man that is off, as if he’s pulling his punches. It doesn’t matter why. It only matters that it gives the weapon an edge. He shoots him and lands a few sqaure hits, but his target refuses to go down. He drops a chip of some sort, and the soldier sees an opportunity to put an end to both the man and his plan. They grapple for the chip after falling down into the weapons hub. It ends for the leader with a knife wound and the soldier gets the chip. He intends to crush it, but he doesn’t get that far. 

          The man who just won’t stop fighting dislocates his shoulder and the weapons screams in agony. Without warning, he ends up on his back and he’s being choked into unconsciousness. His metal arm is trapped and he can’t escape. For the first time, the soldier feels fear, but by then, his struggles slow to a stop and it’s too late. 

          He comes around quickly, moving to pick up his gun with one shaking hand. With his right arm useless and his vision still swimming, he staggers to his feet to shoot at the man. He gets him once in the leg, but even that doesn’t stop him. He steels himself against his own dizziness, lining up a proper shot and waiting for his moment.  

          The sound rings clear as the bullet leaves the chamber, hitting its mark with stunning accuracy for a man in his shape. The uniformed man stumbles to the ground, but rights himself enough to finish his work. The soldier is out of bullets, and he can’t climb in his condition. He’s finished.  

          It is, perhaps, time for the soldier to end.  

          He lets out a panicked wail as a girder falls on top of him, not expecting aid or rescue. He is wrong. The man he had tried so hard to kill comes for him. He crashes against the girder, looking to the soldier with watchful eyes. He’s confused again. He doesn’t know why, but this man persists against all reason to help him.  

          With an almost fearful growl, he manages to pull himself out from under the wreckage. It crashes down when the man before him drops the beam and the soldier rises. 

          The strange man tugs his helmet off, stumbling to the side a little. “You know me.” 

          It’s a weak kind of rebuttal, but it enrages him anyway. His sense of self is going careening off the rails and it’s this man’s fault. “No, I don’t!” 

          “You’ve known me your whole life! Your name is James Buchannon Barnes.” 

           _James Buchannon Barnes, 107t_ _h_ _regiment...._  “ _Shut up!”_  

          They both fumble for their footing, panting with desperation: one to stop his growing confusion and the other to see the man he once called his friend.  

          “I’m not gonna fight you, Bucky.” he says, pulling in a breath through his nose. “You’re my friend.” 

          He drops the shield. That’s his mistake. “You’re my mission!” the soldier roars, taking him to the crumbling glass floor beneath them and beating him with all the strength he has left. He shouts the words over again while he hits him, almost like he’s trying to convince himself. He pauses, breaths heaving out of his chest. Something about this man just isn’t right. 

          “Then finish it.” the man murmurs. “Cuz’ I’m with you t-… the end of the line.” 

          The words hit him hard and his breaths catch. For a moment he’s horrified by what he’s done. Some voice inside him cries out for the _boy_ under his hands. The kid who never quit. His eyes search the man for only a moment before he’s plunged down into the icy water of the bay. The soldier only hesitates a second or two, dropping down into the water to rescue him.  

          Dragging him to shore, the soldier.... No.  _Bucky_ stares down at the uniformed man. Partly, he’s assuring himself that he starts breathing, but he’s hoping for some form of recognition. He only comes up with a name that feels more familiar than it sounds.  

          Steve Rogers.  

          Who is he, then? Does James Barnes even exist anymore?  

          Once he’s sure the other super soldier is going to survive, he turns around and hobbles his way to the nearest tunnel up into the city. He’s soaking wet, but he knows how to go unseen.  

          He steals some clothes from a store and picks up a cap from a rack along the street. He looks back to the bay, brow furrowing as he remembers that the idiot dropped his shield. Huffing to himself, he walks into another store and steals a new set of clothes. It’s going to take him a long time to get dry at this rate. 

          Once he has the shield, he waits a couple of days, stalking around in shadows and alleyways to find out where they put Steve. He has no idea what he’s doing, but once he finds out, he slips into the hospital unnoticed. He stands at the foot of the bed, noting that the damage he had done is almost healed already.  

          With care, he puts the shield down and scrawls out a shaky note. His arm still hurts from a couple days ago, but it’s nothing compared to what he feels for almost killing Steve. He’s conflicted over what he remembers, but he knows, for whatever reason, that the only loyalty Steve knows is the stupid kind.  

          His note reads: _Don’t look for me. Not yet. I need to figure out a couple of things, and I get the feeling you’ll chase me if I don’t warn you off._

          He finds some medical tape and puts the note inside the grip of the shield. That should keep it from prying eyes. With one last look, Bucky slips out the window and into the streets. Only time would tell how much he’ll know, but there’s no way he can go back. He’s not losing all of this again, and nothing can convince him to let go. 

          He finds a newspaper and enters the Smithsonian, realizing that for the first time in _seventy_ _years_ , James Buchannon Barnes is a free man. He wants to know who that is, even though he doubts he can ever be the same. 


End file.
